Becoming Red
by A Road Unturning
Summary: You're not a monster.


_Disclaimer: Don't own LB._

_A very old drabble on Miniature Bites I decided to publish properly. I decided I liked it a little too much for it to stay there._

_Warnings – Second person perspective. _

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**RED**

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You're not a monster.

You never were a monster, even when you drank the blood and banished the daylight from your life. It was an unknowing decision, and you...you are innocent. When you look at people, you focus your gaze on the light in their eyes and the stitching on their clothes. Never on the curve of the neck. Never on the thick, protruding vein of the jugular. Never on the pound of blood rippling below live flesh. For no, that isn't you. It wasn't, it isn't, and it never will be.

You hide your face from the others, drawing across your old yellowing curtains like a personal guard. You lurk within them, staring accusingly out at the jagged shapes of the cave under cover of night. They laugh away from you, dipping pale fingers in blood and old Chinese, and sometimes, they even call your name. You shake your head mutely, as you always do, foolish girl, and crawl beneath the old blankets that smell of decay and sea spray. You rock your head against your pillow, and try to remember things. Like the colours in your preschool nursery, or the shade of your mother's favourite lipstick, or the memory of your first kiss; soft lips and tickling fluff as opposed to hard stubble.

There was a lot of red in your nursery. You try to recall the surface details, like the hard edge of a banana coloured chair or the large clunky beads you would line together on chunky string. But somehow red...a primary colour, of course there was loads of red in your nursery. Red dolly dresses, red fire trucks, red plasticine, red books, red building blocks, red apples, red juice. Pomegranate, your favourite. But the red slips away from these items, and clashes together in an immersive splurge of red. A deeper red, more like when cherries are split against sharp teeth, or the sticky rush of your first period. Your mother's favourite shade of lipstick was a crimson hue. And suddenly, the boy's skin is white and bone juts from his neck, for you kissed him so fiercely you tore through his mouth and dove for the area of skin where shoulder and head meet.

They call you little sister, and sometimes it amuses you, but the majority of the time you find it sickening. You never had a sister. You were an only child, born to parents whose faces fuzz and ebb out onto the pulse of the night, into the beat of blood. All you know is that you weren't happy, and you came here. You try to map the space between here and then, but you find it impossible. You find a lot of things impossible nowadays, and you fear the night when it becomes impossible to say no.

Maybe you did have a sister once. You came here, to carousals and pretty lights shining off dark water, and you met a girl. She had Asian eyes and multi coloured stripes in her hair, like all the colours of the rainbow, and she was strange, like you, and alone, also like you. You became friends, fast friends, like small children around a sandbox, and she was fierce whilst you were wild and the world suddenly seemed, for a short time, smaller and more manageable. But you both liked boys. Boys with fashionable hair and wicked smiles and silver tongues. Boys who rode loud motorcycles and rocked to angry music and looked dangerous but weren't really. You liked all that. You liked Paul, who spoke kindly to you one night. You were confused, you thought they liked your friend; they'd been flirting and joking with her all evening, commenting on her hair and giving you both rides. It filled you with a flicker of pride that he was paying attention to you. He liked her, of course he did; they all seemed to.

The look in their eyes was hungry, and you thought it was for sex. They took you back to a cold cave, where winds swept your skirts around her ankles and mussed your hair. She followed, a little drunk on Dwayne's whiskey and intoxicated on Paul's weed. You'd steadily refused it all through the night, until the handsome leader with the cold eyes smiled. Smiled at your cautiousness, at how you held back, ducking from Paul's petting hands and Marko's softly spoken questions. They were asking you questions, and boys never ask questions. They take, they leave, and go. It was making you feel afraid. You glanced at their faces in the dancing shadows of the oil drum fire, and they suddenly seemed too intent, too inviting and beautiful and famished of company.

There was a small child crouched behind the rotting drapes. He stared at Rainbow, than back at you, pursing his small lips and clenching his tiny fists. You saw Paul lean down and whisper something in his ear. The child bit his lower lip, his small form trembling, and slid behind the curtains.

A cool hand snaked through yours. Dwayne was pulling you away, saying something about a certain sight he wanted you to see, for his gaze had been the most _intense_ and _hungry_ and _mysterious._

He kissed you. Feral and alive and spicy against your mouth. His hands drew down your lower back, and you felt the crush of nails grind against the white of your tank top. You wanted to balk; you didn't like this. His pressure was too demanding, but he tasted good, and they had been kind, so one kiss...one kiss wouldn't hurt.

You opened your mouth and something tangy, bitter, seeped behind your lips and stained your teeth.

He'd bitten the inside of his mouth, and blood trickled from the upturned edge of his lips. He smiled, stepped back, and fretful apprehension pricked your gut. You turned to leave, to call for your friend, but she wouldn't answer and the taste of his blood was rich, richer than any wine or alcohol or drug you've ever experienced. It filled your senses, ripped through your stomach and overwhelmed your nose with a musky aroma that tingled to the ends of your fingers. You felt like you were breaking. Your knees buckled and the world swamped into _red._

Life begins. Not the life you imagined, but it is a life, however crude that word is in describing what _this_ is.

You're not like other girls.

There is a boy on the boardwalk with eyes the colour of ocean shallows, with hair that is brown like the earth and a smile that reminds you of the sun. His skin is warm to the touch, and his pursuit of you is strong.

You sneak away from your brothers. You wear a skirt the colour of his eyes. You brush your hair and file your claws and blink fast to chase away any gold from your gaze. You wrap a rainbow scarf around your arm in memory. You wear soft boots to hide the grime coated bottoms of your feet. You want a night away from everything red.

He's in danger. You're putting him in terrible danger, where there are caves and carousals and caverns in people's necks.

You sidle up to him, smirking instead of smiling. Under the fading lights of the stringed bulbs, your incisors glitter.

"That's a rip off."

Maybe you are a monster after all.


End file.
